... the importance of the common ...

 ... good, the common weal, in Wales, Germany, Hong Kong and the USA.

In Wales we have Jac who considers the common weal to be a narrow view of the xenophobic, the intense and irrational dislike or fear of people from England ...

In Germany there are the considerations of the Euro, is the financial rescue fund considered crucial to the future of the euro to get the green light.  A poll published on Friday on Spiegel Online showed that 54% of Germans were in favour of the court blocking the legislation, reflecting the degree to which public opposition to bailouts is increasing.  Is the common weal the good of Germany, or has the definition extended to people of one country extending their largess to other nations ?  Do the German people see themselves as kin with the peoples of Greece, Portugal, Spain, Italy, France .......


In Hong Kong it's very serious, will Beijing allow universal suffrage, even though it doesn't exist as a democratic process in China itself, universal suffrage has little value in a single party state.  The effect of extending democracy to Hong Kong which has a semi-autonomous status in China, is to open the doors to a "China Spring", in effect the demise of Communist China.  When  thousands of demonstrators protest against the plan for mandatory patriotism lessons, you know there is trouble ahead ! 

Whilst in the USA the battle between Republican and Democrats will be resolved when the peoples who vote decide who are the stakeholders, is it all the peoples of the states, or just a small group who hold the wealth, an important consideration when considering the Common Good, and lets not forget the prayers !

Back to Britain and there is a kind of hush, our politicians are driven by opinion polls rather than the Common Good, it's quite pathetic.

Blind, deaf and dumb, pathetic ..

... politics that has a system where regimes that suppress its people are allowed to condone the genocide of the Syria people by applying a veto on civilization.

... student Zaher Shehab has watched, helpless, as the uprising in Syria has torn his country apart. Then came news of a devastating attack on his family, writes Laura Pitel for today's Times

It was a Friday afternoon at the end of term. He should have been working in the university lab. Instead Zaher Shehab was standing in a corridor of the pharmacy faculty, following his mother’s funeral on his mobile phone. He had just lost seven members of his family in a single attack in Syria. His mother, Mayssa, his younger brother, two uncles, one aunt and two cousins had all been killed. They were working in their fields in a suburb of Damascus when they were hit. Two thousand miles away, the Bath University student could do nothing but try to absorb the news, powerless to help. “I can’t remember what I felt because really at that moment I couldn’t feel anything,” he says, his voice calm. “My brain stopped thinking. I couldn’t imagine what had happened. All of them together: my mother, my brother. Everything changed on that day.”

The polite, gently spoken 28-year-old arrived in Britain in 2010 to study for a PhD in pharmacy practice. A top-class student, he came on a scholarship paid for by the Syrian government, and was planning to return to Damascus to teach. But in November, Syrian intelligence snooped on his online exchanges and found anti-regime messages to friends. His funding was withdrawn. The university hardship fund and the Wellcome Trust stepped in. Without them he would have been forced to drop out.

His last trip home was shortly after the start of the uprising, which erupted in Syria last March on the back of turmoil across the Arab world. It was a surprise visit that delighted his parents, particularly his beloved mother. But a brush with the security forces, when he came close to being arrested, has left him unable to go back. Instead he found himself following developments in Syria from the incongruous setting of a West Country spa town.


While fellow students worried about deadlines and grades, over the past year and a half he has watched his country descend into violence. As the movement against President Assad has accelerated, he has seen protests sweep through his town, Daraya, and friends and neighbours killed. As the turmoil has dragged on the bloodshed has grown, with children massacred, whole districts destroyed and the estimated death toll topping 17,000.

Then, on July 6, the conf lict knocked on his family’s front door. He had just that is to blame. “We don’t know the kind of rocket or shelling — if it came from tank fire or helicopters,” he says. “No one could tell me if the rockets came from this side or that side. But for sure, 100 per cent we know that it is the Assad regime that owns these rockets and these tanks.”

Were they targeted deliberately or unlucky victims of random fire? It’s a question he will probably never be able to answer. The family were not politically active — they spent all their time working on the farm where they lived a simple life, growing tomatoes, aubergines and salads. “But in Syria there is no grey, only black and white,” he says. “If you are not with the government, they consider you against them.”

Friends and colleagues have been supportive and kind, putting him up in their homes so that he does not sleep alone. But they cannot compensate for being so far from Syria. “It is a hard time,” he says. “I can’t say anything else. It’s hard because I’m here, far away. I couldn’t do anything to support them. It’s difficult when one person dies ............

I guess we have to send a big thank you to Russia and China ......

...... and a big sigh of hopelessness when we see the antics of our world politicians unable or unwilling to say NO to the tyrants, thanks to the rump of civilization, UK, USA, Canada, Germany, France, Spain, Italy, Brazil, Argentina, South Africa, India, Australia .... et al.

 

behind every ...

... great fortune lies a great crime, Honoré de Balzac.


And what a crime, $21 trillion (£13tn) crime, a crime as big as the combined economies of the USA and Japan.  Fortunes created on the backs of populations pushed beyond the reach of taxation, beyond the reach of the societies that created these buckets of coin hoarded by such a very few people.

In the USA there is the Apple Corporation that holds its wealth offshore, it avoids paying the taxes that could pay for healthcare for the poorest in its society, in the UK we have similar crimes where companies and individuals establish off-shore vehicles to avoid passing back to society a share of the wealth created by the little people in the form of taxes.

The misconception is the owners of capital are wholly entitled to every penny of the surplus (profit) a business makes, this conveniently avoids any responsibility for poverty level wages that require redistributed government expenditure (taxes and borrowings) to pay for subsidised housing, healthcare, education ....... the list is endless.

All profits, as with income, should be taxed at source where it was made .... that way every fortune will have avoided the stigma that ...

... "behind every great fortune lies a great crime".

... and the taxes will help the little people that they might live without the poverty that seems to accompany great fortunes !

These crimes are not restricted to the USA and the UK, the people of Germany, Canada, France, Australia, Japan, China, India ............ are all losers in this great crime of "cheat the people of their dues".

A tea party, or café para todos ...

... (coffee for everyone), and a hat tip to "labour uncut", the full story here.

The story of Spanish devolution is not well known outwith Europe and those organisations that would separate its regions into countries via independence.  It's that well trodden path of small fish needing its own pond, couple it with left wing economic models, then the use of smoke and mirrors (it's very rare for a separatist movement to be anything other than left wing, could there be a principle in there somewhere);  and of course, that ancient mantra of the separatist agenda everywhere - "the grass is greener over there.........".

The origins of Spanish, and devolution throughout the world, is that "local needs" should be addressed through "local channels", on the face of it a reasonable aspiration, in reality it has been the lazy way out, an admission that centralised government can often fail those citizens that are remote from the seat of government, or who have peculiar traits that are ignored as unimportant in the grand scheme, language variation being a prime candidate.

If the time-line of the European separatist movement is examined its start date coincided with today in 1773 the British Government passed the Tea Act followed by "The Boston Tea Party", the origins of the separatist movement.  This event is remarkable in that it demonstrates to the world the only legitimate reason why separatism should be enacted, it is when government, deliberately, gives an advantage to one section of society to the detriment of another.  footnote .... the argument that the act was to counter smuggling is superficial to say the least.

So where might Spain go from here, it seems that one regional government leader is proposing a winding back of its devolved administrations to gain economies of scale by streamlined regional spending, the spokesperson of this proposal is the leader of the seat of government for Madrid region, which by coincidence is also holds the capital the Spanish capital city of Madrid.  It might be prudent to ask how many jobs would be lost to Madrid if the regions relinquished their various administrations to central government, and how many jobs would migrate to the centre of government.

The Spanish crisis is an opportunity to re-model the governance of this ancient country, an opportunity to present a level of fairness through less government, to allow the seventeen autonomous communities of Spain to determine exactly which "Café para nosotros" is appropriate.  No longer are the words "you can have anything you want, as long as I want to give it" appropriate in the 21st century, regions should be allowed to make their own mistakes, they should be allowed to fail (just make sure the other regions are not underwriting their borrowings).


The crisis could also be the catalyst for other countries throughout the world with distinct regions to create a form of devolved governance that conjoins "separate" with "together", my guess is it closer to the USA model than to the China model.  There might also be a recognition that occasionally a separatist movement might gain a critical mass of such magnitude that mutual separation is the better course of action, Belgium is a prime candidate in this 21st century Europe, Scotland has become a close candidate, as do one or two Spanish regions, China has a peculiar problem with Tibet; a common cause of dissent seems to be a perception of unfairness ........ I am sure this particular hot potato is not beyond the wit of humankind to solve.

Peacocks, KPMG and an Indian ...

... textile and clothing company, the way forward for the Far East.

With the realisation that outsourcing the manufacturing of clothing and other textile products, to places such as India and China, is no longer the most effective (£link) and efficient method of production, what is happening behind closed doors at KMPG should come as no surprise to observers of economic trends.

As reported in todays Times ...

... to salvage Peacocks from administration (Marcus Leroux writes).  S Kumars Nationwide (SKNL), a textile and clothing manufacturer based in Mumbai, was last night locked in talks with the administrators KPMG. It is believed to be in the driving seat after interest faded from Edinburgh Woollen Mill and Alshair Fiyaz, a Pakistani clothing magnate. In 2009 SKNL, which turned over 51.8 billion rupees (£667 million) last year, bought Hartmarx Corporation, an occasional tailor to President Obama, and Emeresque Brands, a British investment vehicle.

KPMG refused to comment. 

...  following on from paragraph 2 ...

... the need to adapt quickly to changing fashions has prompted River Island to bring its manufacturing back to Britain.

The clothing chain, one of the country’s largest, said that rising labour costs in China were also making production in Britain more viable. It has increased the number of items produced at home by 50 per cent in the past 12 months and says that the changes have paid off.

Ben Lewis, the chief executive, said: "It has allowed us to get new fashion to our customers much quicker than we were able to, and as a result some of those products have become absolute best-sellers. We can get more of them and work closely with the factories."

The Far East recognises the symptoms and have come to Britain, not for the benefit of Britain, but to lock the British consumers into their production .....

..... does Cameron and our home grown Jones realise what is happening, there needs to be an incentive to encourage manufacturers to imitate River Island, zero business rates and a 10 year free corporation tax for returning "prodigal manufacturers", and similar for those that remained.

Both Cameron and Jones, between them, have the means to see the repatriation of manufacturing to Britain .......

... can you imagine living in ...

... a city like Homs, in a country where the government sends its artillery to fire on your home.  Could you imagine sitting on Caerphilly mountain overlooking Cardiff watching plumes of smoke rising from Splott, or people fleeing from St. Mellons through the fields towards Caerphilly being shot at by snipers.

Over the top?  Ridiculous? ... well that is what is happening in Syria.

What about the opposition?  That would be the Syrian National Council in Turkey:

• Coalition of seven opposition factions, united against Assad regime
• Includes Kurds, tribal leaders, Islamists, democracy activists
• Formed last November after months of talks in Turkey
• Stated aim is to support the revolution and overthrow Assad

And here lies the problem, both Russia and China have applied their veto because this group wishes to replace the hereditary dictatorship that Assad leads in Syria.  If Russia and China had supported the resolution, how could they continue to suppress opposition groups in their respective countries, they needed the UN resolution to condemn both sides in this conflict !

In Britain we have a hereditary Head of State, she has been with us for 60 years, Mr Cameron praised the "magnificent service" given by the Queen and called her a "source of wisdom and continuity".

"With experience, dignity and quiet authority she has guided and united our nation and the Commonwealth over six varied decades," he said.

 A bitter-sweet day for the Queen, the anniversary of the death of her father and her ascending the throne.

If Syria had such a Head of State there would be no smoke hovering over the city of Homs, no funerals during the night because daytime is too dangerous because of snipers.

Sad world .........

... why did they ?

............. It's china and Russia, why did they veto the UN resolution condemning Syria's crackdown against anti-government protesters.

Well today it is reported that a further (estimated) 200 people were murdered by government forces in Syria ....................... and Russia says nothing.

Human rights groups and activists say more than 7,000 people have been killed by Syrian security forces since the uprising began in March 2011 ...................... yet China says nothing.

......... the sad world of autocratic governments.

Tim Worstall writing at the Adam Smith Institute blog might be ...

... considered a little shallow in his conclusion, that we should accept state subsidies by the China government as a bonus, a bonus for whom I wonder, not the British public nor the China public, the blog may be read here.

So, are we the recipient of subsidies by the China government, or might it be "smoke and mirrors" of a dishonest kind, consider for yourself ...

... any subsidy must be paid from the general population of the subsidising country, the factory workers of China.

... the cost of unemployment in the recipient market is paid by the population as a whole, including borrowings, not the industry in the market that imports from China, or any other subsidising country or group of countries (the EU and farming is an example closer to home).

... the price at the till will not relate to the subsidy, but be exactly what the market will bear, not its intrinsic value, therefore any benefits of subsidy will not reach the consumer except during poor trading periods.

So, what should be our response to any subsidies .......